SBIR-STTR Award

Atomic technologies such as atom interferometry, atomic clocks, atomic magnetometers, and Rydberg sensors have demonstrated exquisite stabilities and sensitivities. However, the high complexity, cost, and length development cycles have prevented these technologies from achieving their ultimate value. We propose to use additive manufacturing in combination with microfabricated components, micro optics, and low-noise electronics to rapidly build and assemble atomic devices for atom interferometry applications. Success will be the offering of integrated atomic devices that can be used by NASA, academics, and commercial entities to build compact atomic sensors. This innovation will decrease the Size, Weight, Power, and Cost (SWaP-C) of atomic devices and produce a reliable, high-performance component for stabilizing atom interferometer systems. Atom interferometers are under heavy development using laser cooled atoms in free fall as ultra-precise inertial measurement objects. Enabling this technology can enable ultra-low-bandwidth rate measuring gyroscopes and accelerometers suitable for dead-reckoning deep in space. The NASA Cold Atom Lab (CAL) aboard the International Space Station has used atom interferometry for ultra-precise test of microgravity using absolutely accurate quantum sensing and is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory under the BPS Divison of NASA's Science Mission Directorate. While the underlying technology has been demonstrated, effort in making it manufacturable, repeatable, and reliable is now necessary so that a team of scientists and engineers are not required to operate such advanced devices. This work will enhance the ability for systems to be design, built, and characterized quickly. To develop next-generation atomic sensors, NASA needs reconfigurable, low-power, low-mass atomic devices compatible with off-the-shelf fiber optics and laser systems. Anticipated

Benefits:
NASA missions require high accuracy and high sensitivity measurements and atom interferometers represent a cutting edge inertial measurement and navigation sensor. Potential NASA applications include: fundamental tests of gravity in space, the detection of gravitational waves using a laser ring interferometer geometry in space, precision tests of gravity during planetary flybys detecting sub-surface minerals and water, and navigating through space precisely and accurately using absolutely accurate inertial navigation. Compact atomic devices can solve medical, defense, and telecommunications applications if the cost can be brought down by over an order of magnitude. By utilizing technologies suitable to repeatable and mass-manufacture, this high-complexity technology can be applied to commercial problems where cost-sensitivity is very high and this work reduces some of the associated cost barriers.